Edith is here for the BAFTAS…and chips

Edith Bowman has turned to a Dundee children’s author’s books to help keep her five-year-old son Rudy feeling Scottish.

Maintaining their Scots connections is hugely important to TV and radio star Edith and her husband, Editors frontman, Tom Smith.

“We come up to Scotland a lot and I have a lot of Scottish books I read to our sons in my dialect,” said Edith, who admits Hamish The Highland Cow, by Natalie Russell, is a particular favourite at the family home in London.

“There are interesting words and meanings Rudy picks up on and he takes the mick out of my dad’s accent. Hamish is a real fun one we read and there’s a great one about a family of midges around Loch Ness.

“Rudy’s obsessed with the Loch Ness monster at the moment. So there is a real sense of his Scottish heritage.”

Edith, who hosts tonight’s Scottish BAFTA Awards in Glasgow, makes sure there are plenty of visits back to Anstruther. And it’s literally for a taste of home.

“I’m up in Fife at least every couple of months and I’m lucky that my mum and dad are down a lot as well. I need to get my sea air and fish and chip fix. And I head for the Anstruther Fish Bar every time.

“My mum gets slightly offended when I go home. She asks what I want for tea and I always say: ‘I’m going to the chippie’.”

Edith was heavily pregnant with son Spike, now nine months old, when she hosted last year’s ceremony.

“I was really lucky with both my pregnancies and had an easy time of it,” said Edith, who’s loving school run chats with Rudy and days at home with Spike.

“People approach you like you’ve got an illness but I had no problems and enjoyed last year’s ceremony.

“Rory Bremner was saying: ‘Get this woman a seat!’ but I was telling him I was fine.”

Ford Kiernan and Peter Mullen are a couple of the big Scots names up for awards at Glasgow’s Radisson Blu Hotel. But movie-mad Edith, who hosts BBC TV and film show Screen 6, says she’s only been starstruck once a recent interview with Robert De Niro.

“I nearly vomited before going in because I was so nervous,” admits Edith, proudly flicking to a picture of the two of them together on her phone. “I was pacing the hotel corridors doing some deep breathing.

“I asked the guy from the film company what I should call him and he said: ‘Just call him Bobby’.

“I made him chuckle during our chat which is a brilliant achievement. Maybe it was my accent everybody loves a Scot.”

Edith turns 40 in February.

“It doesn’t bother me. I feel younger than I did 10 years ago,” Edith smiles. “I feel more settled and happy. I don’t like the word content because that means you’re resting back and I’m not.

“But I feel happy about everything at the moment.”